Dictionaries and definitions can be so calming. They assist with what "The Trauma of Everyday Life" is about: seeing that many things that annoy or frighten us are normal parts of life. When you read definitions of what is bugging you, you realize the source of annoyance or fear exists but it isn't all that rare and its visit to you is not personal, just business as usual.
Dr. Mark Epstein writes in his The Trauma of Everyday Life:
This attitude toward trauma is at the heart of the Buddha's teaching, although it is often overlooked in the rush to embrace the inner peace that his teachings also promised. But inner peace is actually predicated upon a realistic approach to the uncertainties and fears that pervade our lives. Western psychology often teaches that if we understand the cause of a given trauma we can move past it, returning to the steady state we imagine is normal. Many who are drawn to Eastern practices hope that they can achieve their own steady state. They use religious techniques to quiet their minds in the hope of rising above the intolerable feelings that life evokes. Both strategies, at their core , seek to escape from trauma, once and for all. But trauma is all pervasive. It does not go away. It continues to reassert itself as life unfolds. The Buddha taught that a realistic view makes all the difference. If one can treat trauma as a fact and not as a failing, one has the chance to learn from the inevitable slings and arrows that come one's way. Meditation makes profound use of this philosophy, but its utility is not limited to meditation. As my patient realized when grappling with his diagnosis, the traumas of everyday life, if they do not destroy us, become bearable, even illuminating, when we learn to relate to them differently.
When I first came upon the Buddha's teachings, I was young and not really thinking about illness or death. No one I knew had died, and I was struggling with my own issues of adolescence and young adulthood. Trauma, in the sense of confronting an actual or threatened death or serious injury (as the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines "trauma"), was not something I had to face directly. But there was another kind of trauma, developmental trauma, percolating under the surface of my experience . Developmental trauma occurs when "emotional pain cannot find a relational home in which it can be held." 1 In retrospect , I can see that this was the case for me. In my first encounters with Buddhism, I was trying to escape from emotional pain I did not really understand. But in order to practice the Buddha's teachings, I needed a realistic view. This meant accepting there was no escape. The most important spiritual experiences of my early exploration of Buddhism gave me such a view, although I have had to be reminded of it time and again as circumstances have evolved.
Epstein, Mark (2013-08-15). The Trauma of Everyday Life (pp. 3-4). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
